The following is something new for this website/newsletter/blog. A substacker who writes about my favourite baseball team does a segment where, every time the team general manager or CEO speaks, he analyses his comments, trying to pick out the most important points. Given the negativity surrounding Irish cricket at the moment, I thought I’d do the same for Warren Deutrom, the Cricket Ireland CEO. He said a lot in a recent interview, so be warned, this is the longest piece I’ve ever written on the site (I have edited some of Deutrom’s comments for clarity).
Cricket commentator and podcast host Adam Collins was in Dublin last week. He wanted to know what’s going on in Cricket Ireland; why was he seeing frequent tweets about cancelled fixtures and Teslas? He recorded an episode of his podcast, The Final World, where he interviewed Deutrom. You can listen to the whole thing here. I also appeared on the pod, offering context and analysis before and after the interview.
It’s an important occasion whenever the CEO of a publicly-funded company speaks. Especially so given all the problems which have been thrown at CI in recent months. As Deutrom himself says in the podcast: “when you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
The interview started off with Collins asking Deutrom if, after CI postponed a series with Australia, moved South Africa to the UAE, failed to get the Euro Slam over the line again and caused controversy by obtaining company Teslas for the CEO and CFO, was this his most difficult year yet since taking over in 2006? Here’s Warren:
“No, I’d say wind the clock back, that same year (2019) was probably the toughest year from a financial perspective. That was our tough year, 2018-19. When the organisation didn’t have money, we had to resort to some, shall we say, unorthodox lending practices to extricate ourselves. It was the year after we’d become a full member. That was tough because it was about not having money. On this occasion we do have money but we’ve just been delayed from being able to put out the good news into the public domain. When it comes to comparisons about…frustrating delays this year vs what seemed like existential issues five years ago, I would take this year any time.”
For context, those “unorthodox lending practices” were Deutrom himself lending €100,000 to CI to stem cashflow issues. This report from 2018 explains it well, but essentially, CI alerted Sport Ireland of the loan on a few occasions, particularly after John Delaney did a similar thing with the FAI and it caused a public relations nightmare. At the time, CI said they received legal advice before proceeding with the loan and everything was above board. Sport Ireland subsequently carried out an audit.
It’s an interesting answer. From a PR point of view, it’s difficult to remember a more turbulent time in Irish cricket than the start of 2024. That Deutrom finds image issues easier to deal with than existential threats is probably fair enough. Still, negative PR ensures plenty of criticism. The CEO was asked if he was “copping” more negativity than the norm, and if this is difficult to deal with.
“Yes is the answer. We can’t have it both ways. We can’t want to be bigger, above the radar and not take the heartaches that come with it. We are, in Irish cricket terms, the government, the head office, and that comes with additional scrutiny. We can’t accept wanting to be bigger, wanting to be above the parapet and not take the other concomitant stuff that comes with it. That’s the corporate answer. The personal answer? Yeah, it takes getting used to. Growing the skin, growing the hide, you have to get used to. Do we still believe we’re doing the right things? Do we still believe we’re on the right track? Yes. Does that mean we’re going to have people believing we’re not? Absolutely. There are those who will always have their opinion about what we’re doing, what we’re not doing, and in many ways the opinions have grown probably in the absence of our ability to confirm things this year, driven for factors which no doubt you’re going to tease out of me in the coming minutes.”
It’s Deutrom’s job to believe in what he and his organisation are doing. Otherwise, there’s no point in him being there. Still, it reads slightly as strange that recent criticism takes getting used to given he has been in the job since 2006. Proof, perhaps, that this is the heaviest PR hit he has seen.
There will certainly always be people who disagree with ‘the man’, whoever holds the keys to power, but it’s also a fine line between believing in what you’re doing and ignoring public sentiment to the point of losing the trust of the cricketing folk on this island.
Next up, Deutrom was asked about last Thursday’s board meeting which signed off on the budget and gave the green light for what, hopefully, should be a rake of announcements. He gave the same line characterising the budget as he did when handing me a statement just under a month ago. The man definitely does his media prep.
“The best way to characterise it is that this is a budget as much for Irish cricket as it is for Cricket Ireland. This is about us saying that our obligation as a national governing body goes so much further than us merely servicing the needs of the international game, and probably in terms of Irish cricket history, servicing the needs of the men’s senior squad in a way so much of our growth and acceleration into the world stage, the annals of full membership, has been driven by the men’s senior squad and their achievements, in a way that is unfamiliar to people.
“We are playing 46 international fixtures this year. So the perception that we’re doing less is actually incorrect. We should be adding to those provided that, fingers crossed, touch wood, our women qualify for the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh this year. We are going to be adding in more fixtures from the revenue that we gain to help prepare the squad ahead of that competition.”
As Deutrom has said previously in an interview on this site, they are committing to spending a fair whack of the new ICC money on the grassroots. In 2018, CI laid off a number of development officers, handing over responsibility for the grassroots to the provincial unions. This budget, then, should be an olive branch of sorts to the club game to make up for such decisions. On Monday, we finally got some detail of the headline changes to grassroots funding. Given the general lack of trust in the organisation at the moment, a lot of people won’t be won over until they see the benefits to their club.
Speaking of grassroots, YMCA CC recently pulled out of Cricket Leinster competitions because they couldn’t come to a ground-sharing agreement with their new landlords, Lansdowne RFC. Given the history of the club and its status as a producer of international talent, it was put to Deutrom how much of a blow to Irish cricket the loss was.
“There’s no doubt it was whatsoever. From the history of the club, you mentioned the names… (the interviewer listed the names Tector and Lewis) it’s a cliché but we as a national body still feel very close to the grassroots and the community of the game. In a sense, that denotes the sense of family that we all feel. In some clubs, it’s literally family.
“That still feels very much the case, probably more so than any other full member, you’ve got that sense of proximity between club and country. We’re trying to grow that middle tier, but in doing that one of our clear objectives is supporting clubs, facilities, to make sure that particularly around preserving grass wickets and grass wicket clubs, that’s becoming more and more difficult. We already have one of the shortest seasons, we already have a dearth of pitches where we can play our representative cricket, trying to preserve these facilities is going to become more and more important for us.”
Question: Does the club’s demise reinforce that need for grassroots support?
“It underscores the need for us to rebalance the perception that it’s all about the men’s senior squad, to ensure it’s going to go from grassroots all the way up. That will be things like equipment, increasing hosting fees to clubs that are going to be hosting our representative cricket. It’s also about supporting our match officials.
“We’re trying to look like other full members but on our resource base.”
In the interest of full disclosure, I am (or was) a playing member of YMCA. I don’t want to dwell on this issue for too long, and I have avoided reporting on the matter to avoid conflicts of interest. But the club came up in Deutrom’s interview on the vital topic of grassroots cricket, so it should be discussed here.
As a member, I was pretty disappointed in Deutrom’s answer. He didn’t actually reference the club at all, apart from agreeing with the question. There wasn’t any solidarity offered to members, or a meaningful expression of sadness. It was just, ‘yep, you’re right, let’s talk about pitches.’ It’s very hard to square the idea that CI feels “very close to the grassroots” when one of its most significant clubs has been, hopefully on a temporary basis, forced to shut its doors.
The next topic of the interview was Dave Richardson. Shortly before this interview, Cricket Europe reported that the former ICC CEO was earmarked to join the CI board. Richardson, a former South Africa international and a veteran administrator, has no clear links to Irish cricket, other than working with Deutrom when the former was head of the ICC. Despite being William Porterfield’s replacement on the board, his job wasn’t publicly advertised and Deutrom himself approached Richardson to take up a position which oversees the CEO. Once again with CI, there was an optics question to answer.
“In many ways it’s a little frustrating that this has come out because this information is supposed to be confidential before the AGM passes it, but on the basis that it’s already out there in the public domain, I’ll say it. We’ve got governance processes. It’s not just a CEO pick, nod and a wink and suddenly the person is parachuted onto the board. My job as CEO is to make some robust recommendations. I made a recommendation to our nominations committee. They considered David’s pedigree as, ‘wouldn’t it be nice to have a former chief executive of the world governing body who’s prepared to come in and give his time and expertise to us?’ They agreed. They made a recommendation to the board, and we hope that recommendation is going to be followed through by the AGM on Sunday, April 28th.
“I can see why there would be a perception that he just picks up the phone and asks his mates. David and I, I would have worked - it makes us sound like peers, we weren’t - he would have been my senior at ICC when we were working there. For me, the ability to pick up the phone to somebody and ask would he be prepared to put himself forward, would he be prepared to go through our governance processes, and selling to him the vision for Irish cricket. It was largely, ‘David you were a large part of our process coming through,’ it was on his watch that Ireland became a full member. He gets us and he understands us.”
Let’s pause there and remind ourselves that, in 2015, Richardson said that making Zimbabwe better is more important than making Ireland better, according to journalist Tim Wigmore. Does he really “understand us?” That quote was nearly 10 years ago, but did the nominations committee ask him about this before agreeing to put his name forward to serve on the board of - *checks notes* - Cricket Ireland?
Deutrom contines:
“There’s no way of getting around the fact that around 70 per cent of our income comes from the ICC, a large part of our other income comes from hosting cricket against the other members around the world, broadcasting, sponsorship, spectators, corporate hospitality, it’s all driven by being in the FTP, relationships with other full members, with whom David has excellent relationships, as I think I do, as our chairman Brian MacNeice does as well.
“We’ve received a really honest message from ICC. It’s important for us to now stand on our own two feet as a full member.
“That’s a really important message for us. Having the insight of a former chief executive of ICC, should he be approved by the members on April 28th, is going to become inherently important for the business, and for the other directors to understand the mind of our largest creditor.
“But also for somebody with his gravitas…for me, wouldn’t it be great to have the only NGB in Ireland that is going to have a recent CEO of the world game sitting on the board? I think that looks brilliant but it should look brilliant. Hopefully there will be those who look beyond the ‘it’s Deutrom parachuting in his mates’ into perhaps the more broader context. At the same time as me hopefully fulfilling my duty to use my knowledge and my contacts to make recommendations committee and our board and thence to our AGM to say this is somebody we think can genuinely add value to the business.”
People definitely will not look beyond the ‘parachuting in his mates’ narrative just because Deutrom said this is ok and went because the move went through CI’s procedures. Bearing in mind Deutrom - who is answerable to the board - himself just acknowledged this appointment was his idea, the move needs to be placed under significant scrutiny.
Saying “we’ve got governance processes” and asking everyone to move on isn’t really good enough. What exactly are those processes? Who is on the various committees? Are they cricket people who won’t just be wowed by Richardson’s “gravitas”, who will ask him to explain his previous comments about Ireland’s standing in the world? As is becoming a consistent theme in the interview, Deutrom aims for transparency, but falls short. More detail is required.
There is a world in which Richardson’s appointment is an excellent one. There is a key message in Deutrom’s words there. The ICC has said to CI ‘you’re on your own, make things work financially.’ Richardson could well help in that process. But the manner in which he comes into the organisation is arguably more important than the actual decision. If CI loses the trust of the people who care about Irish cricket, then we may as well pack up and go home. Without fans engaging, there is no cricket in Ireland that’s worth governing. That trust has to be rebuilt.
Next up, Deutrom was asked about Scotland, an associate member, stealing Ireland’s lunch with reports that they will now host Australia after Ireland chose not to.
“I would bring it back to that simple fact, we are hosting 46, or playing 46 international matches this year. We’re playing 47, 48 matches at provincial level at our men’s interpros, women’s super series, we have an emerging competition, our Wolves have been in Nepal, we’re gonna be hosting West Indies U23 this year, that is an awful lot of representative cricket. We’re trying to show it as a much more balanced investment across the game.”
“I’ve given you the corporate answer. Just because it’s corporate, doesn’t mean it’s not true, that is all factual. At a personal level, a human level, it was a difficult conversation picking up the phone to Nick Hockley (Cricket Australia CEO) and saying, ‘Nick, we’ve looked at our schedule, we think we’re going to have to make some difficult choices here about what stays and what goes, and we’ve concluded that, difficult that it might be to believe, this is the only way forward.’
“The simple fact for us was, because we have so few pitches here in Ireland where we can host international cricket, we had to make a fairly difficult decision. It required us to have to open up Malahide. We estimated it was going to be a very significant six figure loss for us to have to open Malahide. Broadcast rights wise, Australia would be the 4th largest of all the various hosts, it would’t have even covered the cost of production, bearing in mind the cost of opening up Malahide and bearing in mind it’s an entirely Greenfield site. Those are the decisions we’ve had to make and what it does is it highlights for us the massive imperative to keep pushing government to build us a permanent stadium.”
Deutrom has a point that it’s easy to see headlines on cricket being cut from the provisional schedule - the Future Tours Programme (FTP) - and think CI is taking the machete out. In reality, Ireland is playing a hell of a lot more cricket than it has in the past.
But (there is always a but with Irish cricket), the reason that perception is there in the first place is partly CI’s fault. They didn’t have these Australia games forced upon them. CI signed up to the FTP willingly. The reality is, because of finances, they have bitten off more than they can chew. After looking at the FTP and getting their hopes up, fans are fully entitled to be disappointed when a series is cancelled. Deutrom says the Aussie series is only postponed, he intends on making up for it down the line, but it’s worth remembering Zimbabwe ‘postponed’ a Test on Ireland in the last FTP and that still hasn’t been accounted for.
Also, that figure of 46 internationals includes games outside of Ireland - away series, qualifiers and World Cups. Ireland isn’t bearing the cost of all of those, probably not for most of them.
Saying 'we are hosting more matches than Scotland’ - which Ireland should be doing anyway as a full member - or that more cricket is being played now than before completely avoids accountability for signing fixture-cheques which can’t be cashed. CI’s own assent to the FTP is what set the way for the image of cutting cricket and subsequent negative narratives.
Given the central issue behind fixtures being cancelled/postponed is the lack of a permanent stadium, Deutrom was asked about Abbotstown. His first answer offered no new information: there are other Sport Ireland projects ahead of cricket in the queue at the government campus. After a follow-up on whether moving fixtures abroad will be a medium to long term trend (it will be), he said the following:
“In short, until we are able to convince the government to build us a stadium in Dublin which we are able to control, able to have our players bumping in and out without having to totally understandably harmonise our fixture list with clubs…until we can have a place we can call our own, we’re going to have to find ways to cut our cloth. Because the alternative is, we have less cricket.”
A lot of responsibility being placed on the government to pony up here, instead of CI themselves…
“The day after we got our full membership in 2017, I did a speech here in Dublin to our assembled people still flush with, isn’t this fantastic. Look, this is brilliant, but ICC has given us this privilege because they see the potential in us to grown into full membership over the years. We’re not the finished article. Just because we were granted full membership yesterday, doesn’t mean that today we suddenly have permanent stadiums of 10,15,000 people. We don’t have broadcasters knocking down our door domestically saying we’re going to pay you tens of millions in broadcast fees to produce a signal so all our costs are paid for. You can then send that signal overseas at our cost and make more money off that. We don’t have sponsors ready to throw enormous amounts of money at us. We don’t have all the domestic infrastructure of interpros, super series, which we’re now developing.
“All of these things, we have to build in an environment which is still largely associate member in terms of its infrastructure. These things simply take time and yes we are going through those growing pains. We’re starting to move away from, it’s all about men’s senior squad. Only in the last two/three years we’ve started investing in women’s contracts. Other than rugby, we could well be the only other organisation that has professional women’s sportspeople. Those things shouldn’t be forgotten in terms of all the other things we should invest in. It just takes time.”
I largely agree with all of this, in terms of Ireland being behind other full members in infrastructure, playing pathways, TV interest. But sponsorship is the one that I always question. Cricket is historically a small, but middle-class sport for the most part in Ireland. There are plenty of business-minded people deeply involved in the grassroots of Irish cricket.
On Monday, an Indian dairy company announced it is sponsoring Ireland during the upcoming T20 World Cup. Cash is cash, it’s all welcome (unless from dodgy gambling companies, who CI have been associated with in the past) but why is CI completely reliant on faraway companies, most often from Asia, for sporadic sponsorship?
Granted, the women’s team has Certa, who benefit from the positive PR of sponsoring just women’s sport, akin to what Sky used to do with the FAI. Certa aside, is it really the case that there aren’t business owners watching club cricket on a Saturday who CI could target? It could be a bit of a leap, but I wonder if the disconnect from the grassroots, which CI is acknowledging by saying they need to give more money, and the lack of trust in the organisation more generally is hindering these conversations.
Given this discussion on funding, Deutrom is then asked what is ultimately the most important question in all of this (I know we haven’t got to the Teslas yet…). After the ICC said this is what you’re getting, no more, how does CI become financially self-sufficient, given it has yet to do so?
“I think when we became a full member, our turnover would have been something in the region of 5, 6, 7 million. This year we’re going to be spending 16.2 million. So, it's not the fact our money isn’t increasing, it’s our costs are increasing and we’re trying to invest in so many more things. We’ve more than doubled our income, but we’re doing more stuff. We’re always compared, rightly, because our competitors in the cricket world are no longer associate members, they’re the world’s biggest nations, it’s those nations not just with their deep pockets but their sophisticated systems and infrastructure.
“So, how do we get there? It’s going to take time. It’s making sure we can develop that stadium, which is so critical. It’s not just a place with more pitches and which we can control, but for me it’s a symbol of our maturity. The more we can play international cricket at our club grounds - and thank god they are good enough to give us that opportunity - but as long as we do that, and we don’t have a stadium that we can call our own, it’s probably easy to look at us as still having minority sport status. We as a sport offer massive amounts. Ireland as a nation tends to look not much further east than the end of Europe and not that much further west than the US. What does cricket do? We index nearly all the other parts of the world outside that. We think we’re a brilliant way for Ireland PLC, the department of foreign affairs and equivalent organisations in the north of Ireland to engage with countries and markets really only cricket can reach. I think that’s our fantastic opportunity.”
Right. Technically, cricket is one of the few sports played in Ireland which can appeal to the Asian market, which is what he’s ultimately talking about here. But the question was on specific ideas for making money. The interviewer was not asking for vague declarations on infrastructure and where the sport has an interest. As alluded to above, CI already gets a handful of Asian sponsors whenever India are in town or fans on the subcontinent are watching ICC events. That, clearly, is not enough money. Collins follows up, asking is it impossible to find a regular shirt sponsor, among other revenue streams?
“No, not at all. If I believed in probable, impossible, we would never have filled out Malahide in 2013 with 10,000 people. We never would have become a full member. I never believe in never because if you do that, all you do is place a limit on your ambitions. Let me look towards 2030, what are our opportunities as a sport? We’ve just got brand new ICC funding, we’re going to be getting the best part of $70 million over the next four years starting this year. That is untold money by comparison to what we would have received in the past. It would have been 37.5 million over eight years but this is nearly double the funding in half the time. That’s already going to be a big boost to our coffers.
“We’re already planning to spend 2.35 million more in the business this year, that’s only going to grow. Cricket is now an Olympic sport, what’s that going to do in terms of opening up opportunities? Just the other night, we’re now an official associate member of the Olympic Federation of Ireland. [It’s an] Opportunity to open up new revenue streams.
“Off the back of the fact there are going to be more teams participating in ICC events over the next four years…by the way that is at least partially down to the efforts of CI arguing the case for more teams participating in more events. We’re going to be more visible. Three years out of every four, we think our men and women are going to be participating in World Cups. That’s giving an opportunity for us to be more visible to make more money. 2026 is the final year of our current broadcast rights agreement which means a new deal is going to be starting in 2027. We’re still actively pursuing at looking at a franchise competition on a European business, that’s still very much in our plans and we’re still giving it the best chance to succeed.”
Forgive the cynicism, but we’ve heard Euro Slam optimism for far too long now to take any of it seriously until the first ball of the competition is bowled - if it ever is. Regarding everything else, Deutrom essentially says that the prospect of Olympic qualification, more ICC event participation and a new broadcast deal (plus the Slam *sigh*) all present revenue-generating opportunities.
All of these elements are incredibly volatile. As Ireland have learned to their detriment, it’s hard to qualify for World Cups consistently, even if 4 extra teams will participate in 2027. The LA Olympics in 2028 won’t have enough teams for Ireland to realistically think about qualification. Irish broadcast rights, as we found out last year when parts of the Zimbabwe series were not available to Irish eyeballs, aren’t that valuable unless England or India are the opponents. How is it prudent financial planning to say more money will be made off the back of things that are far from certain?
Ireland has been burned very recently by budgeting based on variables. They planned for the ICC to release an extra $1.5 million in March. When that didn’t happen, budgets had to be redrawn and fixtures were lost. Deutrom’s comments suggest an organisation which has not learned its lesson. It seems farcical to promise commercial viability based on unpredictable events.
What his answer lacked was detail any plans. He didn’t state the simple goal of developing sustainable relationships with long term sponsors, someone with whom contracts can be signed which safeguard income. He can’t give that detail because, if previous evidence is anything to go by, such discussions aren’t taking place. Apart from Certa, CI cannot attract a regular.
This piece is already long, so we’ll skip past the sections of the interview where Deutrom shrugs off a joke about the Slam living on. He also plays a straight bat when asked if India should be sharing out more of the ICC’s revenue given they are already the richest cricketing nation. Like most countries, CI is terrified of pissing off India.
Next up is a question on DRS. Will CI be in a position in a handful of years to have technology at all its home matches? For context, the women’s series with Australia last year didn’t even have run-out cameras.
“We want to get to the point where the things…what happens in the world game is that the things which start off as nice to haves like DRS, floodlights, run-out cameras even, they all become set standard. Suddenly the cost of delivery of the game becomes unbelievably expensive. When we’re doing that in already greenfield sites, all we’re doing is adding to our fixed costs. We then have conversations around the table internally here, people say ‘this investment in events is going north, are you sure you’re spending money in the right areas?’ It’s investment in men’s or women’s senior cricket, that’s great, that’s investment in the high performance side at the expense of the grassroots game.
“We, however, are a full member, and we have to keep with the minimum standards in the game. In four or five years time, we do want to be able to deliver these minimum standards in the game. But I would say this one thing, I think there can occasionally be a little bit of preciousness around the sanctity of everything in the international game. It must be done like this, it must be done that way, all of which just drives up the overall cost of delivery. Yes, at the highest part of the game, it has to be delivered to the highest standard, but I also think we need to reduce barriers to the game being played. A dukes ball and kookaburra ball costs three figures now, DRS is now $10-15,000 per game. People will see the benefit at the very high end, but if it’s at the expense of the broader system then maybe there are ways we can be slightly less precious about insisting upon the quality of delivery.”
Labelling people “precious” for asking for run-out cameras and DRS in top end cricket is an interesting move. Deutrom himself said these are “minimum standards.” Can one be precious about something that is the bare minimum of what is expected?
In a cold calculation, spending money on a grassroots initiative probably is more justifiable than a day of DRS. But run-out cameras (not a part of DRS) and evening matches with floodlights are really not “precious.” Admitting that you are not in a position to both fund community cricket and deliver a top-end international product is, again, honest, but concerning.
It’s Tesla time. Towards the end of the interview, Deutrom is asked about the company cars bought for his use and that of Andrew May, the CFO. A disclaimer before we start: while there is a lot to say on this issue, do not let the fact that it will be one of the last things you read here cloud your judgement. There are far more important takeaways from this piece, found above, than what to think of Deutrom’s Tesla comments.
First of all, the CEO says there is now just one Tesla. The other has been returned. We don’t find out which senior staff member still has their car. He then goes into more detail about the process of buying the vehicles.
“Electric vehicles can be expensive. However, I think the key point is, to go back to the statement, it’s the difference between having a mortgage and renting. Our view was, leases were about to come up, should we reinstate the lease for a three-year period or should we actually just invest in a hire purchase agreement? By the way, we don’t own the vehicles. In terms of what has been spent on Teslas this year, it’s €14,000. Which is exactly the same cost as we would have on a lease, except for the fact that in three years time we’re going to own the vehicle. Which means the company has an asset.
“At a human level, yeh, I can tell you it’s been painful. The perception is it’s a snout in the trough, look at them up there spending hundreds of thousands on flash, posh cars. It was a business decision made for financial reasons. If you’d gone for the equivalent say in a Skoda or a Ford, which would have been the same cost, perhaps people may not have asked the same questions. I suspect it’s the perception of the posh brand being a Tesla that has asked all the questions. At a human level, if I could go back, give the car back and get a less posh model at a slightly accelerated price to save the hassle? Hell yes. But from a company financial perspective, would I want the company to pay slightly more just to avoid the perception? No, I wouldn’t be doing my job.”
Deutrom says he would go back and change the brand of car while also saying he wouldn’t. More literally-minded people than I have labelled this Orwellian doublethink.
Would CI really have to pay more money to avoid the perception problem of buying Teslas while cancelling fixtures? Are there seriously no other cheaper electric car brands? Not for the first time, Deutrom tries to have it multiple ways.
Let’s grant him the seemingly steep intellectual leap of saying they can get a Tesla for cheaper than a Skoda or a Ford (what about the Opels the IRFU drive?) there was still no explanation for why he or May, well paid senior staff, need a company car in the first place. Deutrom also didn’t say anything on driving a car worth more than 75 per cent of player salaries.
Collins didn’t leave the Tesla issue there, asking if there was board oversight on the decision to sign off on the cars.
“The remunerations committee chair would have been aware of this before leases were signed, before we went down this road.”
Who is the board member who acts as chair of the remunerations committee? Does “being aware” mean he/she had formal sign-off? Did anyone in the building ask any questions at all?
Next question: Have you learned the importance of giving off a perception of being as pure as the driven snow?
“Yes. Honestly, yes. If I had my time again and had the option to not to get a car that has been perceived in the way it has in some quarters, no doubt whatsoever. I can tell you at a personal level, some of the commentary which has tended to give the impression of a snout in the trough has been quite difficult. Myself, my family, friends, etc… it’s the old thing, me sitting here with a microphone under my nose: when you’re explaining, you’re losing. At an optics level, it didn’t look great.”
At the risk of being brutal, if you don’t want to have your integrity questioned, don’t do things that lead to justifiable questions. Deutrom is again saying that he would go back in time and change the car brand, after just saying both that he would and wouldn’t. Which is it?
The interviewer then asks about the timing. The Teslas arrived as players are playing on contracts which expired in March and have rolled over (full details explained here). It also comes as a major club, YMCA, shut down for this season. Does Deutrom need to rebuild faith with the cricketing public?
“I think there’s been a sense that the world in Irish cricket has all been about cuts in the last three or four months. That’s been driven in a large extent because we haven’t been able to confirm things based on our late confirmation of the budget, which has now been approved. Now we’re able to get on the front foot and say this isn’t about cuts, far from it. It’s been about investing…we simply haven’t been able to confirm our new investment into the sport. Now, I think, we can confirm over the next few days we’re going to be putting an additional €2.35 millions into the game. I hope we can now demonstrate it’s not been about taking money out and others taking money for themselves, in fact, everything is done according to robust business cases. We’re now going to be putting money into the game to grow the system.
“I can draw a line and move on, but it’s going to take other people time to come to the conclusion that things have changed, things have been improved. Hopefully, over the next couple of weeks with us putting out positive messages about what we’re doing, hopefully people can see the system is being grown.”
Right at the end, Deutrom approaches answering the question: does he have work to do to rebuild public trust in himself and CI? He is right, though, that over six weeks after a CI employee first cast doubt on the Australia series, we are only now getting full fixture clarity. Even then, we still don’t know everything given the women may earn more fixtures should they receive a bonus from qualifying for the World Cup.
Any negative speculation, if they want to call it that, has at least in part come about because CI has allowed an information vacuum to build. Then when they did try to address issues, such as the Teslas, they released strangely arrogant statements and didn’t respond to follow-up questions. As a big organisation, particularly one under the pressure CI currently finds itself, you will struggle to build enough trust to ever completely control the narrative. But CI has allowed much of that trust to evaporate by staying silent for so long, as Deutrom tacitly acknowledges.
The interview concludes with a question on longevity. Deutrom has been in this job since 2006. Is he tired and does he have an exit strategy?
“In our world people come knocking asking you would you consider looking at other things. Every time I look at other things, particularly if they’re in larger organisations, the sense I get is that the ability to move things in larger organisations, you might be able to shift a dial five per cent, 10 per cent, you might get a bit more money, you might get a bit more visibility, you might get a couple more sponsors on board, you might shift a dial five per cent and then walk away after three, four, five years knackered having spent 95 per cent of your time firefighting because, where you are is so high profile, all you feel like is you’re being punched every single day.
Did the CEO of Cricket Ireland say that he has been approached to run other, higher profile companies? Did he also just say that part of the reason he wouldn’t go is because he wouldn’t like the additional media scrutiny? It’s a bizarre look, the head of a body lobbying the government for a significant investment in a stadium suggesting he would struggle with people asking questions.
Don’t get me wrong. As we recently saw with now former FAI CEO Jonathan Hill, running a big sport in Ireland can be a brutal job. But it’s only an impossible task if the individual isn’t particularly competent. Some people will always have a pop, but you don’t have to worry about being “punched in the face” by all external stakeholders if you’re good at your job.
“I look at Irish cricket and I see the headroom for growth in the next four, five years, which I’ve outlined in terms of more Irish teams in World Cups and Olympic sport, more ICC funding, hopefully a new stadium, co-hosting a T20 World Cup, putting in place a franchise competition, I think my god! Look at all the opportunities. Yes, some Test nation might be able to boast a couple of those, other Irish sports might be able to boast a couple of those, but the combination of those elements is so exciting, so engaging, such a reason to say look what we can build together as a sport. It’s still so exciting, that headroom for growth exists for our sport in a way that I don’t think any other full member has, I think only, in my estimation, the US has our capacity for growth, maybe Nepalese cricket as well because of that passion they have, but in Irish sport I don’t see it anywhere else. Why would I move?”
Nepal probably has much more scope for growth because they have a proper stadium and a large cricket fanbase. So does America, if they harness the expat Asian population properly.
It’s good that the CEO is passionate and energised. It’s his job to be. It’s also good that he’s promising growth. But basing those pledges on, again, rather volatile events such as Olympic qualification seems optimistic at best, vacuous at worst.
There is now, at least, some detail on how grassroots growth may be achieved. Cricket Ireland is spending €16.1 million this year, a record amount. Roughly half of that is going on the grassroots, with provinces in some cases receiving 20 per cent more cash than last year.
Yet concrete information on other issues, such as corporate governance or reliably achieving commercial viability without reneging on FTP commitments, was lacking. The interview was full of both personal sentiment and an overview of the issues for a largely non-Irish audience. It was equally, though, light on detail offering reassurance that CI is in a position to overcome its ever-growing list of challenges.
I had to smile to myself, when Duetrom spoke about the need to maximise revenue, and the lack of broadcast interest being the reason for the Australian cancellation
They have to get 10 days cricket for the men's and women's teams between Early July and late August and the dates for the Zimbabwean test almost perfectly overlaps with the 3rd test at Edgbaston
So who will buy the broadcast rights for GB and more importantly NI.
Sky have the concurrent England test and 100 matches so I can't see them being interested.
I've watched some NZ v Ban onTNT so they might be interested, but with England also playing, can't see them offering much for it
There is a gap from 30/7 to 21/8 when they could have scheduled it, and there is no international cricket in England, and both might have been interested and CI getting a bigger agreement
In a summer of missed opportunities this adds to the list